Issue #5
January 2002
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Girl Games by Gen Katz Gen Katz is the editor and publisher of Games4Girls/Games4Women (http://www.GinghamGames.com, http://www.games4women.com). She has reviewed the more than 40 new non-violent game titles that might appeal to girls that came out at the end of 2001. "I got bleary-eyed playing them," she said, referring to all the reviews she suddenly had to write.
In evaluating this past holiday's batch of games, it helps to know a bit about how games have changed in the last few years. First off, I have a bias in that we review, as our name implies, Games 4 Girls. The site got started in 1996 when game developers considered computer and video games to be a girl-free zone and it was thought that if girls played a game or touched a console it was the kiss of death.
Between 1997 and 1999 there was an explosion of girl-oriented games when developers realized that if they included girls, they might double their market. And so, the question asked was, "What do girls want?" Well, it seemed that girls liked cooperative endeavors, communicating, animals, good stories, no time limits, detailed and attractive graphics, dressing up, clothes, jewelry, productive and creative activities, exploration, music and voices. They didn't like violence, dying in games and having to start over, and they found that shooting at things quickly got boring. Games for girls don't necessarily mean only for girls - although many of them are - or that girls don't play other games - they do. During this period we got American Girl adventures; Barbie scuba diving, riding horses, modeling and being a photo designer and Rockette agonizing over high school. These were more like activities than games, which had the features of competition, score keeping and time limits.
Well, the girl market never really developed, so now instead of making games for girls the new approach is to get girls to play boy games - enter the hand-helds. Unlike games on PC's and Macs which support elaborate graphics and complex story lines, the hand-helds are confined to quick action scrolls or shooters, and the design of console games is determined by the controller configuration, meaning kicking, crouching, shooting, jumping - actions best suited for battle. The female characters that have moved into the arcade style games are well known to girls; Mary Kate and Ashley, Diva Starz, Angelica of Rugrats fame, Sabrina, Buffy the vampire killer and even the venerable Nancy Drew.
2001 brought fewer story-type games that girls were supposed to love. Some unusual "games" are being produced by small companies like Iseesoft, producers of World Dance and companies outside of the U.S. such as Tivola with Alphabet - so artistic it is sold in museums. Like the movies, sequels abound, which also included the much-anticipated Zoombinis titles and Myst 3. Games for the consoles are mostly geared to men and boys with shooters, sports and racing. All in all - it was a lean year.
Click on underlined by-lines for the author’s home page.
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